Kantar Media’s report on US ad spending for the first half of 2011 (full infographic) shows the Q2 year-over-year investment up 2.8% over 2010, slower growth than in Q1, which was up 4.4% over last year. TV is still the biggest piece of the ad-spending pie, but growth is coming from national syndication (up 18.5%) and cable (up 11.8%), not the big networks (down 7.6%). Internet advertising added up to nearly $12 billion in the first half, with 57% coming from paid search. The five biggest spenders: Progressive, Verizon, Experian, GM and AT&T.

According to Forrester Research: “By 2016, advertisers will spend $77 billion on interactive marketing — or as much as they do on TV today.”

Interactive marketing includes paid search, online display, mobile, email and social media marketing, which together will represent 35% of all ad spending in 2016. Forrester predicts search marketing will lose share (to 44% from today’s 55%) and daily deals will lose their appeal.

“Media organizations haven’t adapted. They’re structured in much the same way as they were before the Internet. They bought this fallacy that it would be an additional distribution channel. So instead of radically changing their businesses and cost structures, they fiddled….

“But focusing on Google is pointless. It’s time to reinvent media properties rather than look for government subsidies or trying to shake down Google. My bet is the innovation won’t happen within media companies. They’re too slow, too conservative and too culturally wedded to defunct processes to make the leap. That doesn’t mean all hope is lost. I’m encouraged by the strides made by publications like NewWest.net and all the independent technology publications (I won’t call them simply blogs) that have filled the void capably. The media model for the Internet will be nimbler, have a drastically lower cost base and figure out new ad models that actually excite marketers.”

program: Marketing with Social Media and Networks. From the course description:

“Social media and social networking applications are two of the fastest growing segments of the internet. This class will provide an overview of the major players in the space and successful strategies for leveraging these online communities for marketing purposes.”

At Justinsomnia my colleague Justin Watt does the math on the number of monthly pageviews one needs to make $100k in annual ad-sales income.

The basic math works out to this: You need a million monthly pageviews if you have one ad per page, and you sell 100% of them at CPMs just over $8. Or half a million pageviews, if you put two ads on every page and keep the same CPM and sell-through rate.

There are a couple of challenges, though. First, to experience 100% sell-through on your inventory, you need to work with ad networks that sell to direct response (DR) advertisers who don’t really care where their ads run — like Google’s Adsense — and campaigns from those advertisers rarely return effective CPMs (after the ad network’s 50-60% commission) above $1, unless your site is focused on enterprise routers. I’d recommend modeling revenues based on 50% sell-through rates. Second, the brand advertisers who pay premium CPMs, which online means above $5, are more interested in audience reach and influence than they are in pageviews and ad avails. If you have fewer than 500k monthly uniques (as counted by a 3rd party like Comscore), you need to be an enormously influential brand in your own right if a major advertiser’s going to take a meeting with you. Third, even if your site is large enough and influential enough to merit high-CPM advertising from major brands, the ads won’t sell themselves. So you need to account for commissions you’ll pay to staff sellers or an outside rep firm. More on media math here.

“I read an analyst report on the flight out tonight that suggests the near term price target for $goog is $350, down from $450 because google’s revenues next year are likely to grow in the single digits. They predict 6-7pcnt growth next year down from 15pcnt”

That’s in line with the latest (downwardly revised) Jack Myers report, which estimates paid search will be up 8% next year. More 2009 forecasts.